


there is the road (and there is the story of where the road goes)

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abstract, Angst, Gen, Maglor (Tolkien) Through History, Modern Era, POV Second Person, Potential madness as per usual for this family, Unreliable Narrator, Would this have been written without Richard Siken? No
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 00:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18041879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: This is a year in four hideous numbers, changing like a rolled wheel.





	there is the road (and there is the story of where the road goes)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Victoryindeath2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victoryindeath2/gifts).



This is you. This is daylight. This is a year in four hideous numbers, changing like a rolled wheel.

This is a telephone, like a shell held up to your ear. Speak, and someone answers. Speak, and someone hears you.

This is what they call a movie theater, where the world flashes bright and flat and jarring; these are its dark, crowded seats like a phalanx of shields, marching nowhere. This is the edge of a forest, one between the covers of an old book. This is you at the edge of the forest, with your hands on strings. Puppeteer or harpist—did you ever get to choose?

This is a city, now: blinding glass and ugly vapors. This is Angband but they call it progress. This is Losgar but they call it a carnival, red and shrieking at the water’s edge.

This is you.

 

They have beheaded their king.

Do they know how often such a thing has been done?

 

This is a graveyard. This is where they bury their dead beneath hideous stumps of stone. The stones are broken teeth rising from uncertain ground. Run your tongue along your teeth and count them. Why do they linger? Would you die if they fell from your mouth?

This is where you would lay your father, if he had given you a body to bury. This is where you would lay your brothers, if you had them still. This is where you yourself are laid, and you listen to the birds.

Why are the birds, of all things, the same?

 

This is thunder (the same). This is anger, this is loss, this is silence in a filthy white room with a bed in the corner and, in you, no desire to sleep at all.

There is a street. There is Maedhros. He walks quickly, dressed in black, and he has too many hands. His hair is scarlet, his hair is spun copper, his hair is drenched in rain instead of blood.

You call out his name but nobody hears you. (Speak, and someone answers.) You stumble forward because you’re tall and you’re nothing, and someone has crashed against you on their way to crawl inside a hulking metal beast.

Maedhros turns, and he doesn’t have grey eyes.

 

You are in a land called France that everyone around you pretends is very old. You are in a land called France when the thousandth war ends, and you knew a man in the war who had Fingon’s eyes, who died with two smiles, one on his face for you and the other burbling red from his neck.

That was the bayonet.

 _What happened to your hands?_  He used to ask.  _Shrapnel?_

And you were only surprised that he could see you at all, because he wasn’t Fingon, not really.

 _I like your singing,_ he told you, the night before he died.  _Sounds like home._

 

This is Nirnaeth—you can’t. You can’t finish that name.

 

There are no harps like yours. You lost your harp in a purple sea. Where are the seas like old wine? Where are the ships of Troy or Spain or Alqualondë?

There are eagles in the sky above, eagles that neither scream nor wheel, eagles with windows rather than eyes.

They are metal. Everything is metal. You wonder if this means that the Evil triumphed, but sometimes you hear laughter, and you think that the two things could not both be wholly true at once.

There are no harps like yours, so you find another harp. You have a different name, and a different face, and you sit in the hollow heart of a grand hall, drawing out a song. There is a violin beside you, sister to a lute. There is a lute itself beyond that. Make music, make music, make something matter.

You are not home; you’re barely here.

 

This is white light, and it burns you. This is white light, and you miss it, even though it is weaker than you are.

 

There is Caranthir, a thrown fist and his nose gushing red. You smile from afar, but you know better now than to step into the middle of a fight.

Your story is told. Your story is held in the hands of children. You don’t remember if what they know is  even exactly how the story went.

This is dying—the wild dog groaning on your doorstep, the long parade of black. The choked sobs from the girl with golden hair, her hand pressed against her ear, learning news of someone she loves.

(Telephone.)

(Speak, and someone answers.)

This is you, and you find your harp again. This is you, mending its strings. This is you, and your hands are aching, and if they ever stop aching, you will have nothing left at all.


End file.
